GCHQ’s rumoured hacking operation against Belgacom came back into the spotlight yesterday after a local newspaper revealed more tantalising snippets from a Belgian judicial investigation into the attack.
Originally having come to light thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures from American spy agency files he …

The USA compromised the UN communications, it would be terminally naive to expect that the GHCQ wouldn't have targeted the EU parliament and EU commission's communications.

This is why the UK isn't that popular. We send snooty MEPs over who have a 'don't like foreigners attitude' and hack them instead of asking nicely, then boast about our good relations and partnerships.

No wonder we're not trusted with Space related contracts now we're leaving if that was our track record while a member.

It's funny though. When there's a desperate need for intel on terrorism in Europe, our security services are dead popular. And strangely the same is true when it comes to the requirement for planes and troops to guard Eastern Europe.

I suspect your problem is that you need a more nuanced view of international relations.

Was Merkel really pissed off when it turned out the NSA were hacking her mobile? If so, was she in fact annoyed with her intel people for letting it happen? Or the US for trying?

We employ spies to read other people's mail. It's dashed ungentlemanly, but sometimes very useful. So people take a public position when it's revealed - but that's not always what they're really thinking.

Belgian terrorists

Before we go all Snowdon about mass surveillance, it is worth remembering that the terrorists that attacked Paris originated in Brussels, where the security services are useless (much like everything run in that City).. and British Intelligence is the only such service in Europe not tarnished by association with the Gestapo or KGB.

If they happen to pick up on the wittering of Politicians... all well and good, somebody should have an idea of what is going to happen...

Re: Belgian terrorists

Are you so sure of that? I seem to remember much of British Intelligence being run by the KGB.And Philby, Blunt et al were just the ones they found.....

I think what he means is that British Intelligence is an honest spy outfit that covertly seeks information to pass onto parts of Her Majesties Government, whereas both the KGB and the Gestapo (though he probably means stasi here) had something of a habit of torturing information out of people they didn't like, or re-educating them in a Gulag in Siberia. Or just killing them.

By contrast, the most dodgy conduct uncovered about GCHQ is them discovering that somebody is smuggling drugs into the country in a particular vehicle and somebody in GCHQ then phones customs up and tells them to do a "random" search on that vehicle with specially trained sniffer dogs, and to exercise their selective amnesia by forgetting that GCHQ phoned.

Re: Belgian terrorists @Steve Davies 3

ROFL.... Seriously ROFL...

I think you're missing the point of the argument. The infiltration of British intelligence by the KGB wasn't voluntary on the part of the British agencies. However, rather too many of the European intelligence agencies co-operated either voluntarily, or to serve their own interests.

By your logic, the Belgians "co-operated" with GCHQ by virtue of being hacked. That doesn't work for me, although I'll grant you that additional facts might yet show it to be true.

Bungling Brits ...

The first rule of spying on your allies is to never get caught spying on your allies.

Looks like the rest of the world has an(other) stick with which to beat the UK. Luckily the UK doesn't need any support from around the world, despite Russia queering the WTO, Australia insisting on zero-tariffs, and Argentina deciding now is a very good time to talk Falklands before talking trade.

Because if you did need that support, having been caught with your hands in someone elses till (so to speak) is probably the worst hand you could have dealt yourselves. It's not as if you're the US, is it ?

No. It doesn't tell us who ordered what, or even what they were after. The NSA know about most things GCHQ do. As is true in reverse. This is long-term intelligence cooperation that is older than most people alive - let alone outlasting most people's careers. I'm sure they keep secrets from each other - but they've been working so closely together since World War II that the cooperation is probably habit at almost every level of the organisations.

The target of this operation was supposedly comms in the MIddle East and Africa. Though I'm sure they took time to spy on other stuff while they were there. They're professionally nosy bastards after all...

Re: Really?

Re: If you believe that, I have ...

To be fair, we are constantly advised in these forums that hacks from China might not be Chinese, or those from Russia aren't actually Russian, and so on, so why should hacks from the UK necessarily be British? Did they leave little jpegs of bowler hats, and evidence of innumerable requests for cups of tea everywhere or something? :-)

Nb: Not that I actually think GCHQ didn't do this one - wouldn't surprise me at all [1]

[1] I have to say something like this or I'll probably be accused of being part of the UK-trollfactory that masquerades as members of the Upper Worthington Railway Modeling Society's Afternoon Tea Arrangements committee [2].

[2] Unless it's a frightfully clever double bluff! [3]

[3] Do you all think that a dozen extra scones for this weekend's get together should be sufficient?

Re: If you believe that, I have ...

[3] Do you all think that a dozen extra scones for this weekend's get together should be sufficient?

Shit! Shit! Shit! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!

Oh sorry. Wrong code. That's the code for prepare for disinformation or distraction of journalists in the next news cycle. "The macaroons are looking particularly delicious" is the code for all-out nuclear war.

Re: Really?

If you believe that, I have a wonderful bridge I can sell you..

Hi there, my name’s McCulloch, I’ll buy your facing stones from your old bridge (which I’ve been to look at and had surveyed) and I’ll use it in my new Lake Havasu City and make millions of $$$$ profit from it thank you.

Re: Other angles

Re: Other angles

As I understand it, Belgium's security services haven't been all that cooperative historically. Although I don't know if that's because they don't cooperate - or just don't have the information to share. Certainly lots of people popped out of the shadows after the Paris and Brussels attacks to complain about pisspoor intelligence sharing from Belgium. But I think that's because they weren't actually collecting all that much info on their internal terrorist networks - which have emerged as being quite extensive since.

So I don't know if the Belgians weren't playing ball, hence we hacked them. Or perhaps they were even too polite to read the mail going through Belgiacom and so had nothing to share.

It was nice of GCHQ to wait for the year I cancelled my Belgacom mobile contract, before they started the hack... Like I believe that they weren't hacking them before. Echelon was a big story for about 6 months, when I was living in Brussels. And I've no sympathy, given what the buggers charged me - they could at least have spent some of it on security...

Re: Other angles

Perhaps as the state hosting both the EU & NATO headquarters there are a lot of 3rd party countries doing sneaky beaky stuff that we both are quite keen to keep tabs on.

I have no doubt that there's an element of this. Lower level NATO <Classified> documents will be in the Kremlin before they've been read by everyone on the official circulation list. It's blatantly obvious that you'd want to be keeping an eye on who is talking to who, or sharing what and where - and if Belgian spooks aren't doing it (or aren't sharing), then you do it yourself.

Re: Other angles

"Lower level NATO <Classified> documents will be in the Kremlin before they've been read by everyone on the official circulation list."

This has probably got worse since we invited a number of countries into NATO that were were formerly part of the Soviet Union and where a substantial chunk of their citizens are of Russian origin, some of whom may side with Moscow.

Re: Other angles

This has probably got worse since we invited a number of countries into NATO that were were formerly part of the Soviet Union

Well, the Yanks were the architects of NATO expansion in the hope of weakening Russia, so they can't really complain about any downsides. They'd have evaluated the possible consequences beforehand, and presumably accepted all the downsides.

Re: Other angles

100% reciprocal arrangement - "Err....Mr Smith, would you mind keeping an eye on this gentleman"..."Why certainly Mr Peeters, we've certainly had some concerns about that gentleman in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek for a while"..."Why James, thank you, these National Laws on surveillance are so tedious".."Don't worry old chap, we are on the ball".

Re: Yawn

Re: Yawn

The newsworthy bit is that they got caught, which is less common.

Not these days. Pretty commonplace for them to get caught, and in may instances (eg Skripal) they wanted to be caught.

Old fashioned spying continues much as it always has, and never sees the light of day. What we see in the press isn't the stuff that went wrong, its the stuff that one - or both - sides wanted us to see.

Re: Yawn

"Old fashioned spying continues much as it always has, and never sees the light of day. "

The vast majority of spying and intelligence gathering is reputed to take place in the newspaper reading rooms of public libraries with absolutely no cloak and dagger stuff or clandestine meetings involved at all.

Old men read papers, take notes and see what stories on the back pages simply stop being talked about - there are far more clues in that than in anything that might be said, or kept secret all along.

Re: All true.....but.........

Re: All true.....but.........

Your quote is wrong. Von Clausewitz said that "Warfare is diplomacy by another means". But as I understand it, that's a mis-translation. His actual meaning was that warfare is just another of the various tools that make up your diplomatic options.

Also I don't think that cyberattacks are neccessarily war by another means. It depends what you do. If you blow up a power station that might be an act of war - if you use a cyberattack to disable it, then you could argue that's the same thing.

As for spying, you're both wrong. Spying is mostly about avoiding war. That's the reason that diplomats do so much of it, and are punished so lightly when caught. Note that after the attempted murder of the Skripals a bunch of Western governments got annoyed and kicked out a bunch of Russian spies posing as diplomats. Spies that they'd known about for years. But had continued to allow to operate, because they knew who they were and so could try to spy on them while they were spying. But also because we knew the Russians would retaliate by kicking out our spies working under diplomatic cover in Moscow.

This is why missions like BRIXMIS were allowed to operate freely in East Germany, throughout the Cold War. Because in exchange we allowed Russians to wander West Germany, looking at our military exercises - and thus both were reassured that there were no immediate preparations for war - and nobody ever pressed the nuclear panic button.

Diplomatically the penalties for getting caught eavesdropping are red faces all round, and being summoned to the Foreign Ministry for an interview without coffee - and the poor ambassador getting ranted at.

I cannot think of a passive spying operation that has got even close to risking a war - let alone actually starting one.

The one I can remember where the British government were actually embarrassed was in the 90s. Where our genuine diplomats had been asked to help SIS out in some skullduggery or other. And so real FCO diplomats got PNG'd for spying, who were actually guilty of it. As opposed to the odd case where the KGB screwed up and deported some poor sod who wasn't a spy - or often where we'd deport more of their spies than we had spies for them to deport - so ordinary diplomats got used to make up the numbers.

In general the Russians don't employ local nationals in their embassies. So a lot of the GRU people aren't posing as diplomats, but are there as drivers / secretaries / cleaners / office managers. Which means they've got more nationals to deport - and probably more spies in place. Whereas most countries employ locals for those jobs, as it's so much cheaper.

Re: All true.....but.........

@I_Ain't_Spartacus

*

Ah......"wrong"!

*

......but you are conflating "spying" with "hacking". If you think that to "blow up a power station that might be an act of war", then what do think about STUXNET? Clearly STUXNET was not "spying", nor was STUXNET "about avoiding war". Your description of spying interestingly enough uses the word "passive". Passive is not a word anyone would use about STUXNET.

*

Finally, your description makes the false assumption that we (the unwashed public) know about every activity undertaken by GCHQ, the NSA and the relevant Russian and Chinese organisations. Of course we don't. And to imply that all these activities are "passive spying" strains credulity. Please try again, and try not to use the word "wrong".

Re: All true.....but.........

Anon,

......but you are conflating "spying" with "hacking".

No I'm not. In fact that was the precise point I was trying to make. Hacking the Belgian telco network to eavesdrop on their comms is spying. Hacking the Belgamcom network to break it is something else entirely.

As you say, Stuxnet is not spying. It's more active than that. Maybe a milder equivalent of sending in special forces to sabotage stuff - bearing in mind it was buggering up their centrifuges slowly to increase maintenance downtime rather than blowing them up.

It was done as an alternative to bombing, to slow down the Iranian nuclear program until a peaceful negotiated settlement could be achieved. Remember that Iran are signatories to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty - and these were secret, undeclared, bomb-making facilities in breach of that committment. As a policy it worked rather well - it was reasonable, proportionate, did limited damage and provoked limited to no retaliation. Israel said they would attempt to bomb Iran's nuclear program if the US wouldn't (as they'd done with both Syria and Iraq) - but as I understand it US thinking was that Israel would struggle to do a good job, while the US would still reap the backlash - so if they couldn't persuade Israel to hold off it was better to do the job themselves. Hence they came up with this as a compromise measure.

If you were to write a Geneva Convention of cyber-attacks, I'd have thought that Stuxnet would come under the terms of something that's allowed (under limited circumstances). Deliberately targetting civilian networks, not so much. But that's a discussion that it would be good to have.

Re: All true.....but.........

"Remember that Iran are signatories to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty - and these were secret, undeclared, bomb-making facilities in breach of that committment."

That's debateable. MOSSAD noted at least 15 years ago that Iran had by then accumulated more than enough highly enriched uranium to make at least 100 nuclear bombs and had shown no inclination whatsoever to attempt to do so. Their analysis was that the Iranians were genuinely stockpiling high level uranium in order to start their own civil nuclear reactor - and given Iran's very long history of being screwed over by all sides their desire to do so independently of anyone being able to cut off supplies was fairly understandable.

The Iranians know that oil will run out eventually. They've stated a few times they don't want to be caught short in the energy stakes when that happens.

Re: All true.....but.........

I'd want to see a source for that Mossad believed Iran had the enriched uranium for 150 warheads. North Korea are estimated to have only produced enough material for 5 (ish) warheads per year, and they've been using both centrifuges and a reactor. Though I don't know how successful they've been with the reactor. The US weren't able to produce much more than that in the first years after WWII.

Also Iran had publicly only admitted to centrifuging up to 20% purity - as I understand it enough for fuel but not for going bang. And most of that publicly admitted stockpile had been under IAEA supervision - with them threatening to go up to weapons grade, but mostly not doing it.

Things changed when it turned out they'd built a second centrifuging plant, which they hadn't declared to the IAEA - and therefore where stockpiles weren't under supervision, and it wasn't known what was done there. That second plant being build into the side of a hilll, so that it was much harder to target, and being kept secret, rather suggested that it wasn't for civilan purposes.

A purely civilian program looks as unlikely as the previous Iranian story that they only wanted a nuclear program to have sovereign control of their medical radioactives needs. The program they actually developed looked much more like a dual-use program, if not just a military one. They also had an active missile program and were working on the electronics for bomb triggers. But equally it could have been deliberately designed as a bargaining chip / threat, so they'd try to get close to building a nuclear bomb, while never actually taking the final step. That answer, only the senior Iranian leadership know.

Re: All true.....but.........

And very frequently you want whatever nation is spying on you to be fully informed around some of your military/intelligence capabilities. Tends to discourage the opposition from miscalculating their way into a war you'd rather not have. Taiwan and PRC are very well informed at least on the PRC side. Can't speak to Taiwan about PRC, but it wouldn't surprise me all that much if it's comparable.

"last time I came through UK Customs it felt a little like Prison Visits."

Last time my partner (not British) or I (British) came through UK customs we just waved our passports at the electronic gate and walked through. I've not visited a prison in either capacity but I somehow hope it has more stringent security than that.

Re: @Cavehomme- A McEnroe moment? "You cannot be serious!"

The gas [sic] was made in Russia? No, the incompetent murderous agents who applied the nerve poison were made in Russia. Their synchronous passport numbers with false IDs, their taxi ride from the GRU HQ to the airport, their military photographs online and their leisurely passage around Salisbury, not to mention their mocking Moscow TV interview.